On February 7, 2023, an enjoyable seminar was held in the Mikrocentrum in Veldhoven, sponsored by Holland High Tech and organized by the Optics Netherlands core team (including COPS scientist Willem Vos), in particular Anke Peters, where a number of scientists convened, in particular high-tech industry. Compared to its size, the Netherlands has a remarkable collection of high-tech industries, that are of major importance to the national economy. In many of these industries, optics is a key enabling technology that plays a major role in many innovations. The Optics Netherlands (#OpticsNL) community has taken the initiative to organize the national optics community, to the benefit of education, research, and innovation alike.

Starting with a keynote talk by Frank Schuurmans (alumnus of COPS’ Amsterdam predecessor group :-), the seminar included several brainstorm sessions to obtain a first collection of the needs of many partners. Goals of the sessions:

– To enable the acceleration of innovations

– To align research agendas

– To educate prospective staff to ensure a long-lasting future of this important sector of the Dutch economy

PIs of 6 Perspectief programs – public-private partnerships funded by NWO – presented brief overviews of their optics research, namely FFSO, FREE, LINX, OPTIC, SYNOPTICS, and 3Dni.

The seminar is a first of many more, where the Optics Netherlands community – originally TU/e, UT, TUD, ASML, Signify, TNO – aims to strongly broaden the community (already >150 companies) with diverse partners across academia, education (HBO, ROC), large and small industries (SMEs) and others. To emphasize that we are in this for the long haul for the benefit of society, the Optics Netherlands community sees its horizon extending to more than 50 years from now.